A perfect storm of factors has administrators at School District 61, the University of Victoria and childcare centres scrambling to find a solution to an increase in demand for elementary school and childcare spots in the UVic area.
The parents of children in UVic’s Child Care Services after-school-care program were already feeling the heat since UVic proposed cancelling their out of school services for children aged kindergarten to Grade 5. Instead, UVic’s Campus Services is considering repurposing the space used for its 48-spot after-school programming and use it for the children under-five program. (That would start July 1.)
Then came the recent supreme court ruling that will revert to 2002 class size maximums (that’s down to 20 from 23 per kindergarten class). Combine that with a natural bump in the number of students entering SD61 this year and it’s creating a dilemma that has some parents panicking in a predicament.
Campus View elementary school, for example, is bumping up one to four kindergarten classes (two French, two English) for 2017-18. This, at a school that already has growing waitlists for its before and after school programs.
Manager Tracy Frolek has been with the Campus View Out of School Club for 23 years and says the wait list was already growing before it jumped to 70 this year, thanks in part to parents of children in the UVic CCS program.
“We had about 20 people sleep overnight in the freezing cold [on Feb.1] and that was just to get on the waitlist, and the majority of them were from UVic,” Frolek said.
Campus View OSC is one of four care services that picks up children from Campus View each day with the nearby Gordon Head Kids Club, Oak Bay Rec (Henderson) and UVic CCS.
“We are working with [SD61] to make sure we have the same space for next year,” Frolek said. “If UVic closes, it’s even more of a crunch, but there’s a grander issue, child care in this area is troubled.”
One of the problems at Campus View is one of space, said Mark Walsh, SD61 secretary treasurer.
“They have five portables already, one of our only elementary schools with portables, and three are for education, two for [Campus View OSC] childcare, with [at least] one more coming,” Walsh said.
Over at Frank Hobbs there is less of a panic as that school does have some space, however, there is a waitlist and growing interest from UVic families.
“We do have UVic families on our list and we are looking into an expansion to include more students, including those from UVic families,” said Lynn Young, director of Arbutus Grove Children’s Centre, which offers out-of-school care for Frank Hobbs students. “We are reviewing agreements with the school district to provide continuity for our current out-of-school students and with a hope to absorb some UVic families [if a cancellation happens].”
In the meantime, the majority of the parents with children in the UVic CCS after-school program are growing impatient.
“Obviously everyone [related to this] is on the edge of their seat waiting for a decision but we need to go through due process to get to the solution,” said Jim Forbes, director of Campus Services.
“We’re not going to disadvantage one group over another, we need to meet the needs of all the out-of-school-care community,” he said. “There’s a committee weighing a range of options, so I’m not wanting to talk about one solution, it will be range of solutions.”
However, it’s a process that’s taking too long, says LeAnne Golinsky, part of the UVic Childcare Alliance and whose son Brody, 9, attends UVic’s out-of-school care program. The Childcare Alliance has a distribution list of 67 names, many of them in the precarious position trying to line up a care spot for next year in a market already short on supply.
Originally there was a hope that the decision on CCS, or a resolution, would have happened by now.
“The only update that I was able to obtain was that 'discussions' continue. For how long, no one seems to know,” Golinsky said.
The next consultation meeting between Campus Services and a committee of CCS parents is March 10, as the schedule has been extended into April and May, Forbes said.
In April of last year UVic Child Care Services received approval from the UVic board of governors and university administration for a $1.7 million major renovation of the child care facilities. Shortly after it warned the parents of the current CCS out-of-school-care program (for children in kindergarten to Grade 5) that it could be closing by July 1, 2017.
One of the key topics of the discussion is the use of space that after-school-care programs need. Schoolroom classes aren’t often available for after school programs. One of the problems with Centre 6 at UVic, is it sits empty until 3 p.m.
Repurposing it will add 50,000 hours of availability to UVic CCS daytime programs.